No idea... maybe the Earth is in a part of its orbit that is swinging the planet back around the sun and closer to the satellites - assuming the earth is going faster towards the satellite than the satellite is speeding away from both the sun and earth.

"I want to watch it all burn in an orgy of smashed Coke machines and weasel rape." - HaemishM

The Earth moves through space/rotates around the Sun faster than the Voyagers are moving through space (30 KM/s vs ~17 KM/s). I haven't done any real trigonometry since school but presumably even given the angle at which the Voyagers are moving away the Earth relative to the Earth's rotation around the Sun, the Earth's velocity is still faster when it's moving towards them.

Really fast is (har har) relative. Since they're not propelled, all of the probes are slowed by gravity as they fly away from any planet and the sun. The escape velocity of the solar system bottoms out fast once you're past Saturn, but they lose a lot of velocity before that.

If we pretend the earth's orbit is a circle, and that it moves at a constant speed, then it should travel at 2π x 1.5x108 km/year, and there are 3.2x107 seconds in a year. So 2π x 4.7 km/s, which is approximately 29.5 km/s. By comparison, the manmade object speed record was Juno entering Jupiter's orbit at 74 km/s... approximately one quarter of one thousandth of the speed of light.

Just as the phrase "what the entire fuck" implies the existence of fractional fucks, the phrase "what the absolute fuck" implies the existence of both positive and negative fucks. Taken together with the phrase "what the actual fuck," which implies imaginary fucks, we may conclude that fuckery is isomorphic with the complex field.

In the credit where credit is due department, Mad Mike launched his rocket, and he was even inside and survived!

Got to give him credit for two things,

One, for "manning up" and doing it. Do the talk, walk the walk and all that.

Two, for actually being a good enough jackleg mechanic to build this thing. It wasn't just a lawn chair with balloons attached -- this was a bonafide person carrying steam rocket that managed to keep pointing up until it, well, ran out of steam.

Oh, and for all the people who claimed he'd hurt his back the way his chair was rigged -- he hurt his back.

Well, not getting kicked really, it's more like Galileo is an EU programme so you need to be an EU member to be part of it. Or make a special agreement to join it seperataly. Which I think the UK is going to do a) as British companies have a considerable work share in the programme that they want to retain b) else the UK would be locked out of the more accurate military Public Regulated Service.

Nothing that can't be solved in negotiations, but overall the typical Brexit idiocy. Leave then rejoin anyway.

The UK already lost the backup security monitoring centre due to that.

The GSMC manages access to the restricted signal, crypto keys, reaction in case of an attack on the system and all that. The main is in Paris, the UK one is (was) a mirrored facilty ready to take over if Paris goes offline for whatever reason.

Basically the military part, while Open & Commercial service operations are in the Galileo operating centre.

In US GPS terms that would the Master Control Station at the Schriever AFB in Colorado and the Alternate Master Control Station at Vandenberg AFB.

Obviously the US wouldn't house that facility in some unstable foreign country with a potentially hostile population. Same thing here.

Seeing it blowing soot like an old diesel truck (from the ignition pyros) and then stabilising into a nice, clean Hydrogen-LOX burn is so satisfying somehow....

Edit: The biggest change you can see from the outside is that the two gas generator exhausts are back, as with Vulcain 1. Vulcain 2 (an upgrade focused on more performance) used to inject the GG exhaust into the main stream, for that little extra bit of ISP. Vulcain 2.1 doesn't offer extra thrust, but has been redesigned to be cheaper to manufacture. Thus exhaust pipes instead the delicate piping needed to insert it into the nozzle.

I wish Blue Origin the best (well, as much as I can wish the dread pirate Bezos the best ), but I really hope they make some advancements soon. The little ship that jumps up to the edge of the atmosphere and back is pretty nifty, but its pretty far behind where spacex and others are at currently. Going from that to the giant rockets they are promising puts Elon's grandstanding to shame. I mean, I hope they hit it, but the last decade shows me they have their work cut out for them.

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."-Stephen Colbert

It looks like a shower head and that's how it works. It's job is to mix then spray LOX and Hydrogen in a way to allow a smooth combustion. Mainting a stable combustion, throughout the chamber, without any hot spots, is the tricky thing with large engines.

So you have 566 injection nozzles:

And each of those 566 nozzles has 144 small holes drilled:

And here is how it works:

Oxygen (shown blue here) comes from top in each of the 566 nozzles. Hydrogen (red) joins through the 144 tiny holes

And then there is another twist.

While the Oxygen is piped in from above, as seen here...

... the Hydrogen is piped from the bottom of the combustion chamber (the big lower piper) and then flows through it walls upwards to the injection head::

WHY: By this the hydrogen cools is both the fuel and the coolant that prevents the combustion chamber from burning thorugh.

HOW: By milling tiny channels into the combustion wall:

If that sounded complicated, the explantion and images are actually just outtakes from TV show for children explaining rockets. (It's really good, German, but just watch the animations)

This is were 3D printing enters. As example, 3D printing the nozzles reduces the part count from ~1000 to ~100 and cuts to cost by 40%. And that's just for the 1st iteration on an 30 year old engine. The next step is designing a new engine from ground up for new manufacturing technics and mass production.

I wish Blue Origin the best (well, as much as I can wish the dread pirate Bezos the best ), but I really hope they make some advancements soon. The little ship that jumps up to the edge of the atmosphere and back is pretty nifty, but its pretty far behind where spacex and others are at currently. Going from that to the giant rockets they are promising puts Elon's grandstanding to shame. I mean, I hope they hit it, but the last decade shows me they have their work cut out for them.

Honestly, I am not going to make predictions. But Blue Origin has a lot more going on than they show. Bezos said himself he is burning about 1bn$ of his fortune per year for the company.

New Glenn development is pretty far (as far as we know, lots of secrecy). The BE-4 main engine already exists in it's final size and had testfires at 65% thrust. First flight is planned for 2020.

The SpaceX approach was basically bootstraping. Start small (1 engine Falcon 1), learn and get income from that (this part didn't work, thus the short Falcon 1 life) and scale up. Which is seen in the many iteration of Falcon 9. And some of it problems: As it reasonable length (for its diameter) got maxed out, which lead to the fairing being shorted to allow growth for the upper stage. The entire super-cooling fuel concept, which lead to the Amos-6 pad explosion, was because more thrust was needed but a further elongation not possible. (Not meant as criticism, this is just the result of iterative approach).

Must needed the income from Falcon 1.0, 1.1, to build 1.2. BO isnt in that situation.

They has a top down approach. Like SpaceX they tested concept on a small vehicle (New Shepard) but unlike them NS didn't get scaled up. They used the findings to create a completely new launcher from scratch. This is doable because they don't have to finance themselves from their operating income.

That being said, this not without pitfalls, because rockets are hard and they don't have the benefit of learning lessons early this way. It's going to be interesting.

Indeed. That's what I mean though. I give great credit to SpaceX for doing what they have accomplished from a ground up approach. Blue Origin has some amazing designs and goals, all coming from the top down. This can either lead to an amazing break through (great for humanity) or a giant waste of money (bad for humanity). Both ways obviously can work, but the failures of the Soviet N-1 Program and even the long delays in the latest NASA rockets show it is still a fucking hard path to take.

Bezos is basically vampring an actual percentage of the world GDP into his personal pet projects though, so in a very cyber punk way, I have zero problems with this. Blow up all the shit you want.

But thank you far all the Ariane updates. I'm distracted by so many things these days I cant keep up with space stuff like I use to, and its always great to see the amazing stuff Europe is developing. Your technical updates save me a ton of time. ;)

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."-Stephen Colbert

Here's the latest (presumably final) Block 5 Falcon 9 booster successfully landed on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship after taking the Bangabandhu Satellite-1 to space. They are freezing the development at this point to achieve both high reuse cadence and NASA crew certification. You can clearly see in the image the new landing leg design (self retractable), plus something you *don't* see -- (as much) fire and smoke damage/sooting. Several different systems are in place in this version to make re-entry a bit easier on the craft, including a water cooling system for parts of the base. As far as I know, this is the first time water cooling has been used on a re-entry vessel.

On the other hand, missed the center of the X by a bit, so tighten that up SpaceX!

If you are interested in diving deeper, here is the raw transcript of the pre-flight question and answer interview with Elon and various journalists. And amazingly enough all the journalists seem to have a tech background and ask good questions (no Star Trek vs Star Wars idiocy). Worth the read if you are interested in cutting edge "hobbyist" spaceflight.

You know how sometimes you go out to take some photos and when you get to take the camera out of the bag, you realise that you left the SD card or the battery at home? This guy does

Quote

Astronaut: “Hey, uh, Houston, I gotta ask a question about the GoPro real quick.”Houston: “I’m all ears. Go ahead.”Astronaut: “Pushing the button, I see a ‘No SD’. Do I need that to record? And if it’s recording, is there supposed to be a red light on?”*A long silence ensues*Houston: “I’m told that if it has the card in it, it should have a red light if it’s recording.”Astronaut: “And if it says ‘No SD,’ what does that mean?”Houston: “I think that means no card. We’re checking though, hang on.”Astronaut: “Well, let’s just forget it for now. I’ll get it later. Let’s just not worry about it.”

tl;dr A team of German researchers built their own EmDrive and they concluded the 'thrust' detected is likely an interaction between EmDrive power cables and Earth's magnetic field

Slightly longer tl;dr is that the teams wish to do another round of experiments to finalize their findings, since said findings were actually inconclusive. They did not have the power cables shielded in the EmDrive so naturally that could be the source of the movement, but until they do the experiment with said cables shielded then they, of course, cannot rule them out. However, the measured movement did correlate closely with their calculations of what you might expect to see from magnetic interactions with the unshielded cables so they feel confident that further scientific experimentation will bear them out.

Similar issue with the Mach Effect. Looks like it's probably just some effect from the cabling, but that experiment was so messed up it needs to be completely redesigned to give an actual scientific answer. (Force was two orders of magnitude greater than expected, but force did not change direction even when the crystals were flipped.)

Honestly, the reporting has been all over the place with this one. On the one hand the alt science nuts are pointing out the problems with the tests, while the mainstream science outlets are basically reporting inconclusive tests as slam dunk proof against them.

I suppose in these matters I should make it clear that I also think that both these effects are likely just noise. If I had to choose, I'd give a little more credence to the Mach Effect, but I sure wouldn't bet the farm on it. But doing the science to explore these hypotheses can uncover some truly interesting heretofore unforeseen interactions between forces and materials that could either have practical engineering uses -- or at least be something to be engineered around to avoid future problems.

The interesting thing about the methane in the atmosphere is that it varies seasonally, which I guess is a good indication that it could be the result of some kind of active biological process (i.e. farting Martians).

"Nice attempted blast about my "drinking". I do enjoy a nice cuppa, but that is because I am a bon vivant of gregarious nature and cheery disposition." - Ab

Just as the phrase "what the entire fuck" implies the existence of fractional fucks, the phrase "what the absolute fuck" implies the existence of both positive and negative fucks. Taken together with the phrase "what the actual fuck," which implies imaginary fucks, we may conclude that fuckery is isomorphic with the complex field.

Scientists just discovered something very special about Jupiter’s lightning Jupiter is a massive, swirling mass of towering storm clouds, and anyone who lives on Earth knows that storms are fantastic at producing lightning. When NASA sent its Voyager 1 spacecraft on its trip through our Solar System, its flyby of Jupiter revealed that Jupiter does indeed have lightning, but it wasn’t producing the same kinds of radio signals that scientists are familiar with from lightning here on Earth. Now, nearly four decades later, NASA finally knows why.

NASA researchers just published a new paper in Nature that describes how they used data from the Juno probe to solve the mystery of Jupiter’s strange lightning, and it reveals that the planet’s storms produce flashes that are both very similar and also completely different from lightning on Earth.

“In the data from our first eight flybys, Juno’s MWR detected 377 lightning discharges. They were recorded in the megahertz as well as gigahertz range, which is what you can find with terrestrial lightning emissions,” Brown explains. “We think the reason we are the only ones who can see it is because Juno is flying closer to the lighting than ever before, and we are searching at a radio frequency that passes easily through Jupiter’s ionosphere.”

NASA says the lightning distribution on Jupiter is “inside out” compared to Earth. The lightning originates at Jupiter’s poles, rather than distributed across its surface, and the researchers attribute that to Jupiter’s distance from the Sun. They think that, because Jupiter’s atmosphere is stable near its equator thanks to warmth from the Sun, the lightning is forming in the much less stable air rising near its poles from within the planet.

(It's the casing for P120C, with 143.1 tonnes of propellant the largest monolithic SRB ever built. It will be used as both the first stage of Vega C and, up to 4 together, Ariane 6 side booster. Seen here: